Callie Lou

They moved from Kentucky when she was only four
Up to Detroit to help win the war
Just a sharecropper’s life back in the hills
Her daddy found work pouring Michigan steel

She never fit in the kids called her names
You’re a hillbilly girl no count anyway
With hand me down shoes too big to walk
They’d laugh and point fingers every time that she talked

Callie Lou you know it’s supper time
Won’t you come on in
Callie Lou it’s getting dark
And your coat is wearing thin

So she stayed by herself talked to Cassie her doll
A world once wide open now turned so small
She told her you know we’ll go back in the spring
When the laurel is blooming and the whippoorwill sings

The trains rolled all day as she played by the tracks
He mother had warned her you better stay back
But it was one place that she could be all alone
Away from the teasing and a scolding at home

Callie Lou you know it’s supper time
Won’t you come on in
Callie Lou it’s getting dark
And your coat is wearing thin

The noon time freight roared through with a blast
She never saw it coming it all happened so fast
All left by the tracks on the cold day that fall
Was a crushed pair of glasses and a dirty old doll

Callie Lou honey
We’re taking you home
Lay you down by the river
Where you used to roam

There’ll be no more shame
No reason to hide
And Cassie
Will lay there right by your side